Mcclain Tape Shows Pals Complaining About Cash

May 31, 1989|By John Gorman.

Two men hired by Clarence McClain to conduct a study of parking ticket collections in a scheme to help a New York firm win a city contract once complained that McClain had pocketed a share of their fee, according to tapes played in federal court Tuesday.

A videotape played in the courtroom of U.S. District Court Judge Ilana Rovner, showed Charles Knox and David Hammond complaining that McClain, a former aide to the late Mayor Harold Washington, was hoarding the money paid by undercover FBI operative Michael Raymond.

``And it ain`t even about a lot of money,`` Knox complained. ``But he`s never given us our just due on what we had-period-based on the work we done.``

Knox and Hammond, who ran an unlicensed South Side law school, were hired by Systematic Recovery Service of New York to conduct a study of the city`s collection problems. The study was to be made favorable to Systematic Recovery and critical of its rival, Datacom.

``That`s the old street mentality that don`t even work in this `cause we`re talking billions, millions,`` Knox lamented in a March 22, 1985, conversation. ``If he would take the money from us, if he would hold the little five grand from us. Five grand, man. That ain`t . . .``

Knox was complaining about $20,000 that McClain had received. Knox and Hammond had received $10,000, but McClain had demanded $5,000 of it back, according to the indictment. But Hammond, on one tape, said he had given McClain only $3,000.

``Of the $10,000 we got the first time, Clarence got three of them. We had to give him three,`` Hammond said in a March 6 tape.

``And then he wanted more,`` Hammond said.

McClain is on trial along with former Cook County Circuit Clerk Morgan Finley on charges that arose from the lengthy Operation Incubator

investigation of City Hall corruption.

McClain is charged with taking a total of $35,000 in bribes. Finley is charged with taking $25,000.

In other testimony Tuesday, FBI special agent Gary Dunn related how, as he monitored Raymond`s dealings in an apartment, he phoned Raymond to pass along advice.

``I would ask him to resurrect or clarify matters or elicit a response,`` Dunn testified about how he would phone Raymond while monitoring him through a video camera.

Raymond had begun working for the FBI in July, 1984, after he was arrested on gun charges in Tennessee. He agreed to wear a recording device for the FBI, which set him up in the plush Lake Shore Drive apartment. There the FBI recorded Raymond making payoffs to various public officials. Four former aldermen have already been convicted in the Operation Incubator investigation.